Let’s Talk PARSIQ: Meet CEO Tom Tirman

Community AMA March 16, 2023

FACT: We were supposed have a live interview with PARSIQ CEO Tom Tirman on Twitter Spaces today, it was disappointing this could not happen. There were technical issues with our Spaces making impossible to make Tom a speaker. This is why we pivoted to a text based AMA inside of our community telegram channel. Please read the interview below between Casey (Head of Community) and Tom our CEO. Enjoy!

Casey: Tom, it’s been awhile since the community has had the opportunity to hear from you, how have you been?

Tom: Been well, cannot complain. Busy times as usual. I just got back from London. Some very productive meetings there. Seeing more positivity in regards to the industry, both from crypto-natives as well as those outside of crypto.

Casey: That’s good to hear. Hopefully we will be able to share some news from these meetings with our community soon 😎

It’s always interesting to hear your thoughts on the state of the crypto industry, with the news of SVB last week and USDC losing its peg temporarily, where exactly are we at with crypto in March of 2023 and where are we going?

Tom: Last year was tough for crypto and the beginning of this one has not been easy either. Difference being, this time, with the USDC depeg, we are seeing contagion from traditional financial institutions. Pretty sure we are looking at some type of stablecoin regulation by the US soon. US (SEC especially) have been really critical of anything crypto-related. A lot of on/off-ramps have shut down.

But it seems to me that kind of strengthens the resolve for crypto fundamentally. Which is possibly why we are seeing a strong bitcoin bid in the markets, despite banks collapsing left and right. Markets are at an interesting point, even contradictory in a way. Interesting times ahead, I think.

Casey: We’ve seen Bitcoin and ETH leading the charge in gains this week, what’s your opinion on BTC as a legitimate safe-haven asset? Moving that way?

Tom: We will see if this bid in the face of TradFi crisis will last, or if it’s just temporary. But I am quite sure eventually this is how it is going to end up.

Right now Bitcoin is acting more like gold, not like equities (as was the case all of 2022). Eventually, after this financial crisis is over, Bitcoin will find its use case as a safe haven hard decentralized store of value. Gold will likely do well too, but most people don’t really buy physical gold, they buy contracts, which means you do not own it. Bitcoin solves this issue.

Maybe this crisis is exactly what Bitcoin needs to cement its use case.

Casey: It certainly feels that way in this moment, but of course lots of different feelings in crypto one week to the next.

Moving our attention to PARSIQ specifically, I had a meeting with Per our head of Business Development yesterday to debrief ETHDenver, and it sounds like the guys had a great experience. Lots in the pipeline, what are you hearing?

Tom: ETHDenver was a big success for PARSIQ.

Onboarded clients, users, got attention from competitors and partners. Even some of the largest companies in the spaces approached our team to seek potential partnerships and integrations.

Team is busy working on these leads right now.

Casey: Yes, many of us are super excited! These things take time, but bullish on news 💯

At the beginning of February, a number of us were in Tallinn to visit the brand new PARSIQ HQ. For me, it was a great experience. It’s always great when the team can get together, first of all because it’s a lot of fun and it’s great to see each other, but we also do have a lot of fruitful conversations and planning sessions for the year. Can you talk a little bit about the decision to move into a new office, what it’s like to lead a decentralized workforce, and finally the value of face to face meetings in the Web3 world?

Tom: Back when it was just me and 3 more people, we rented a simple office in a decent location. And later, when we were in a much better position, there was simply no time to look for a bigger one. So finally moving to one feels good. We could invite a big part of the team to the yearly meet-up here in Estonia.

You can get things done remotely, for sure. But some strategic issues are always better discussed face to face. It creates a better bond to interact live with the team. And builds trust.

I think doing these in-person gatherings is crucial at least 2–4 times per year.

Casey: Couldn’t agree more. Plus, it’s probably good for your confidence to beat so many of us in table tennis 😅

What’s next for PARSIQ? I know many people are excited for the roadmap and CEO letter to set the stage for the rest of the year. How do you see 2023 playing out?

Tom: The roadmap that we finalized in February is absolutely packed.

In addition to integrating more chains and building dozens of Data Lakes, an important milestone is the SDK, which just saw a soft launch during ETHDenver.

The SDK allows third-party developers and enterprise clients to build their own custom Data Lakes (and for enterprises that have asked this, even host them on their servers). Possibilities are near-limitless what kind of data APIs could be built.

Additionally, important milestones are public Data Lakes marketplace, Tokenomics v3.0 and a step towards decentralized part of the PARSIQ Network.

A lot to look forward to.

Casey: As we continue to build out our tech, we’re seeing lots of ways we can help projects with their data needs in the blockchain space. I’m curious, can you maybe speak about some of the use cases outside of crypto?

Tom: Crypto-native use cases are great. They are our bread and butter right now. But what really excites me is real-world use cases.

We used to speculate about them back in 2018–19. Now it looks like the time will soon be ripe for this type of adoption. We have made some good first steps. We’ve announced working with ESG DAO to provide on-chain ESG data.

We are working with the official infrastructure provider of the Maldives government on their Smart City initiatives. Payments, remittance, carbon credits data — all on-chain and will be aggregated by PARSIQ.

Multiple government leads — whom we are currently educating on blockchain data (more teasers on these soon).

We are also exploring things like SpaceTech, ClimateTech with players within those respective industries to put all their data on blockchain and index and provide easy access to it via PARSIQ.

These are mostly PoC integrations. But they will lead to big wins in the future.

Casey: SpaceTech 🤯 I like the sounds of that.

It feels like Chat GPT-3 was just a HUGE news story but now we are already onto GPT-4. Are AI and crypto going to become a big thing sooner rather than later? AI seems like it’s in every single app instantly!

Tom: That is the billion dollar question. What will the convergence of blockchain and AI look like. I think we will see many synergetic use cases here.

From PARSIQ’s perspective, the basic use case is to feed PARSIQ’s Data Lake data to AI algorithms, so they could turn it into even more meaningful insights. Even this basic use case could be massive.

Casey: For sure, we will be waiting to hear more about AI in the near future.

Probably the most asked question this last week…

As you know the PARSIQ community is quite astute when it comes to monitoring transfers in and out of team wallets — on March 9 the Developer Wallet and its 5.8+M balance was completely emptied and sent to OKX. Can you speak about what historically tokens in this wallet have been used for, and the reason for the transfer of these tokens?

Tom: That was supposed to be done a while ago. It was the very last piece that was not reflected in the circulating supply and since those remaining tokens were technically already unlocked anyway, it made sense for it to reflect on the circulating supply as well. Now all tokens except the Reserves wallet (which has never been touched) show as circulating.

One of the reasons for internal reshuffling is that the Market Development wallet is mainly used to pay for listings, security deposits for listings, rewards for campaigns etc. This way it will be harder for other people to understand when a security deposit or listing fee gets transferred to a new exchange (to prevent front-running, new listing announcements, etc.).

Casey: Great, thanks for clarifying.

Tom, we’ve got about 15 minutes left, so I will be sure to get in as many community questions as possible.

First off, there is a question about the new tokenomics. What will they look like? Will people still be rewarded through staking in IQ Protocol, or will there be a new model?

Tom: IQ Protocol will be included in the tokenomics for sure. But they will also be able to function as a standalone. It all revolves around the SDK, public data lakes marketplace and “decentralized” part of PARSIQ that is coming. PRQ will have a central role in all of this to secure the network and be able to deploy and run third-party Data Lakes on the PARSIQ Network. Details coming.

Casey: Can PARSIQ publish metrics on costs saved by customers using Tsunami vs building the Infra themselves? (cost of hosting + data storage)?

Tom: There is no one metric, but the savings on the costs can range from 4 figures to 6 figures/year easily. It depends on the complexity of the use case and infrastructure.

Casey: A follow up on that question, is PARSIQ still planning to build a dashboard to show data on Tsunami API usage?

Tom: Yes. Also on the roadmap. It would show the amount of queries being done in real time among many other metrics.

Casey: Can’t wait for this roadmap!

We only have a few minutes left, the floor is yours Tom. Anything else you’d like to say to our wonderful community while we have you?

Tom: Huge year for PARSIQ. I know we probably say that every year, but this one seems to be transformative. Traditional tech, governments, media etc. coming to blockchain. Data is becoming the biggest commodity in the world. Do the math. It is up to the team to make the most of it and realize that potential. I am very hopeful.

But most importantly, I want to thank the community because I think community is the most important pillar for a Web3 project. As a founder, I can recognize the critical importance of social capital. The community helps us go forward, they provide criticism, they support, the community spreads the word and creates network effects for us and for every company in this space. Thank you all for being part of the PARSIQ community!

That’s a wrap on the latest AMA. Again, we are truly sorry for technical challenges with our Twitter Spaces today. Tom has promised we will get to this very soon. Until next time Qties!